Christian Bale has revealed he almost fainted in his Batman costume because he struggled to breathe through it.

The Dark Knight Rises star wears a tight-fitting rubber suit, along with a matching mask and neck piece, called a 'cowl' to play the superhero, and revealed to Empire magazine he found it suffocating at first.

Bale said: "When it gets cold the cowl is extremely tight, and it gets better the warmer I get it; it becomes more flexible. But after a couple of takes I was trying to breathe properly in my nose. I was starting to see stars and I said 'I have to take this off'.

"And thank God on this one I can - on Batman Begins I couldn't - so I had to get inside because I couldn't let anybody see me without the cowl."

The Fighter star also revealed getting accidentally hit in the face for real during fight scenes doesn't necessarily mean suffering for your art.

He explained: "It never looks how it feels. It's so weird.

"You get moments where I've had fights in movies where I get punched really, by mistake, and when you look at it on playback it looks like a really c*** punch.

"And then you do another one which is really slow and big and felt like c*** and you look at the movie and you're wincing, like 'Oh c*** that must have hurt!'."